Carbon Capture and Storage and Carbon Capture and Utilization: What Do They Offer to Indonesia?

Indonesia is a developing country with abundance resource of fossil fuel in the world, and this fossil fuel will remain as the main source of energy over the next few decades. However, the Indonesian Government has committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel consumption as an effort to mitigate climate change. In view of this, two possible energy scenarios are envisioned to honor this commitment: “business as usual” (BaU) and the National Energy Policy (NEP) scenario (National Energy Council, 2014). The NEP scenario reduces CO2 emissions by up to 26% through an improved energy mix, less reliance on carbon-based fuels, and the deployment of renewable energy sources from 2020 to 2050. However, these actions are considered insufficient to further reduce the CO2 emission target, leading to an initiative to implement carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. Although Indonesia is a developing country, it has a mature manufacturing industry, which means that carbon-capture utilization (CCU) technology, which converts CO2 into useful products and intermediates, could provide an additional method to complement CCS technology and help decouple economic growth from excessive CO2 emission (Styring et al., 2014). This report reviews how CCS and CCU are applied in Indonesia, particularly in relation to the energy sector. In addition, CO2 emissions from future fossil fuel consumption are predicted together with the amount of CO2 emitted that is suitable for CCS. The barriers hindering the application of CCS are also reviewed together with the alternatives to CCU technology. Because of some drawbacks in the development of CCS, the potential of CCU deployment is assessed, leading to several recommendations. Finally, we discuss what the application of both CCS and CCU can offer Indonesia.